I’ve been sharing with you lately about the image of a city that Jesus keeps giving to me regarding you. It is a huge and massive city inhabited by a great many people. Tall buildings have been erected in that place. People live and work inside those buildings. It is a busy and bustling city, and everyone moves around inside it, doing what they are expected to do.

But their hearts lack hope.

This is the place where Jesus has entered and is setting out to find and give you life.

I could see a deep, dark hallway nestled into one of those tall, concrete buildings on a busy thoroughfare. The hallway’s entrance was just off the street. And I could see a person pushed deep into the dark corner of that hallway.

That dark corner had become their safe place. It had become their home. It had become their place to hide from all that is dark and scary and threatening and unsafe in the outside world, just outside the hallway on the street and beyond.

Jesus sees that hallway and that person — perhaps that person is you — and is entering into it.

When I thinking about Jesus entering into that dark hallway to encounter the person hiding there, I can imagine it might feel intimidating.

It makes me think about what happens when I come home late at night and enter the bedroom to turn on the light and find my little girl cat, Diva, asleep on the bed. The sudden infusion of light in the room startles her, and her eyes wince against it. She’s disoriented and not ready to wake up, and it takes a few moments for her to get her bearings and warm up to the idea of being awake and re-engaged with the world around her.

So I wait for her to adjust to the light, and I stroke her head as I sit and wait.

I know that once her eyes adjust, the connection we’ll enjoy together in the light is better than the solitude she experienced in the dark. In that dark solitude, she could experience nothing of her surrounding reality. There was only darkness, and she was alone.

But in the light and connection of our shared time together, she receives love and attention and enjoyment and touch. She can play. She can rest. She can ask for what she wants. And she can see so much more of her surroundings. Her reality is broadened. Her experience is more full.

Can you see yourself in this picture? Do you identify with the image of the darkened hallway? What is it like to consider Jesus coming into that place with you, bringing the light of his love and truth to meet you there?